I guess I should re-start my subscription now. I've got about two weeks of Soylent left and can't be sure when they will be able to ship.

I know getting shipping running smoother (or just running) is their main priority now, but my official subscription customer feedback is that I wish they wouldn't charge me until they are able to ship.

Edit: I just went to the portal and it doesn't look like I can re-start my subscription from there. There is only a message that says:

Your subscription has been canceled. Please contact us to reactivate your subscription.

Can I just go onto the soylent.me site and start a new subscription, or am I supposed to email them and wait to see if I ever get a response?

It also says:

You have not added your card details. Use the add option to update your card details.

even though they've charged me on five separate occasions. I wonder if they remove it when you cancel your subscription.

FWIW, my shipping portal said money was going to be taken on Jan 28 for quite awhile. Then on the 28th, the charge date changed to Feb 5. Today, Feb 5, the money was taken from my account. My last Soylent was delivered on Jan 2 or so, and my last bag is being consumed today. (I gave one bag away).

I had originally placed an order early last year around March, but then due to, oh, needing food, I cancelled my Soylent order in July so I could buy food. A few months later I was ready to pre-order again (wait, is this GameStop?) so I asked around in email and on the forums: no, I could not reactivate my cancelled order because it was never fulfilled; I would be treated as a new customer.

So my "old" account is cancelled, my "new" account is paid, just waiting for fulfillment, both on the same email and login. Talk about confusing.

I've been charged $255, once in January and once in February. NO PRODUCT. I emailed two weeks ago NO RESPONSE. This company sucks. This willl get deleted by the mods, but seriously I'm no longer a blind follower. The customer service for this company is disgusting.

I'm going to ask my bank for a charge back on both the charges tomorrow if they don't send me an email before close of business. I've had it with their ineptitude. If they don't offer me a consolation I'm jumping ship. There are other businesses out there that do the same thing.

Think about this: if they can't properly set up an ordering system how can they even make a safe product? We are consuming this!

Why the heck would they charge you before shipping? It even says your charge date for the second product is the date the first ships. Idiots.

Edit: just received their stupid default email, it even says it there:

BILLINGAll new one-time orders are billed on the date of purchase.

New subscriptions are billed on the date of purchase. Customers will not be charged again until after their first Soylent subscription delivery has been made.

tl;dr: We are taking concrete steps to improve our customer service response time. Right now, we can't provide individual customer support on the Soylent Discourse. To keep the Discourse relevant to its original purpose (discussion of DIY engineered staple foods, Soylent, nutrition, science, and food tech) customer issues pertaining to subscription/order fulfillment should be shared in the two dedicated threads pinned to the top of the Discourse board. Last week, we sent out an ema...

This thread is for sharing experiences and feedback from Soylent subscription customers. At this time we are unable to provide individual customer support on the Soylent discourse. Please email myorder@soylent.me if you require assistance from the Soylent customer care team.

FWIW, I completely agree with disputing charges if customer service is no longer being offered here and they cannot (or decline) to respond via email.

I know it takes time to hire people, but burying their ostrich head in the sand and pretending there are no customer service issues in the mean time does not a happy customer base make.

Hi everyone, and thanks as always for your patience. We’d like to address some of this topic’s more frequently-raised issues.

Customer SupportWe understand that our current customer support response time is far from optimal, and we’d like to clarify that every email is received and eventually responded to. The key complication at this point is the sheer volume of emails received; we resolve hundreds of customer inquiries each day, and this number is improving dramatically as we train our new customer service agents. We’d like to share some information that may illuminate our response patterns. The following graph represents our backlog of customer emails over the past two weeks:

As you can see, our backlog peaked in late January as we resolved a shipping delay, and has been dropping substantially ever since, even accounting for the enormous spike following an erroneous shipping notification email sent out on February 2nd. Though it may not appear so to the justifiably impatient customer waiting for a reply, we are indeed making steady improvement in this area. If we continue reducing our backlog at this rate, it should be eliminated in roughly two weeks.

Purpose of This Topicplease understand that our intention for these official feedback topics is not to ignore customer complaints, but to consolidate them into a single area where we can provide general information more efficiently, while freeing up the rest of the discourse for broader discussion. While it pains us to see requests for individual support in this thread going unanswered, it is important to us that we focus our energies on addressing our email backlog so as not to leave anyone waiting even longer for a response. We appreciate your patience as we move toward more acceptable turnaround times, both in customer service and in order fulfillment.

Subscriber InquiriesWe’d like to offer some insights into common subscriber inquiries: what you can and cannot do through the subscriber portal, how our billing schedule works, and so forth.

Customers are able to cancel their subscriptions through our subscriber portal, however we do not currently offer the option to change one’s subscription level or billing date. These are easy to handle on the customer support end, although we understand the frustration of waiting for an email response while one’s billing date is looming. Refunds are easy for us to process, too– in the event that we do not get to you before you are billed for your next shipment, we will do our best to rectify the situation and make sure you get what you want. While our response time is subpar, we have an excellent track record of issuing refunds where they are requested, and we have no malicious desire to take your money without providing goods in return.

New subscriptions are billed once, for the first shipment, on the day this order is placed. No further charges will be issued until your first month’s order has been shipped, at which point you will be automatically billed 1-2 weeks before you receive each shipment. While we understand the inconvenience given our current shipping timetable, please rest assured that we are actively working toward real-time order fulfillment.

The delay between billing and shipping of reorders is an understandably frustrating one, and one which we are taking specific steps to eliminate in the near future. Improvements to the current subscription billing system are in the works, so stay tuned!

We truly appreciate our customers’ extensive patience throughout this experience, and your feedback does not go unheard. We understand the frustration generated by these inconveniences, and we cannot blame you for wanting more prompt answers about where your money goes. Your complaints are valid and urgent, and we are taking concrete steps to improve our response. Everything will be made right in time, and we are actively working to ensure that that time is soon.

New subscriptions are billed once, for the first shipment, on the day this order is placed. No further charges will be issued until your first month’s order has been shipped, at which point you will be automatically billed 1-2 weeks before you receive each shipment. While we understand the inconvenience given our current shipping timetable, please rest assured that we are actively working toward real-time order fulfillment.

Based on numerous posts, this is inaccurate.

Billing occurs every 4-6 weeks, regardless of whether or not product is delivered.

Still, it's good to know this is their intended pattern. BTW: I wrote to them at Soylent.me on Thursday and got a reply on Monday. Most businesses count that interval as one or two business days -- not bad at all. Also, most businesses fudge their response time by counting a meaningless reply. I did get a meaningless reply saying that the response would come within ten days, but the substantive reply is the one that came on Monday.

That's great and encouraging! We know you guys are ramping up production by 50x in the next few months, but can your analysts approximate how that will translate to shipping delay? It seems the current delay is roughly 5-6 months from the point of first order, but for which months will it go down to 4, 3,2,1 months? Maybe something like....

Seriously though, I'd also like to see an informed estimation of how shipping times will decrease in the coming months. Whenever I tell me friends about Soylent - those serious about buying - I don't know what to tell them about the shipping if they tell me that's why they're not buying. Do I tell them that shipping will be significantly faster in a month... 6 months.... 6 years? A rough gauge of how much more efficient shipping will become and how quickly will do wonders for my unofficial Soylent marketing campaign.